Microsoft Needs to Develop an e-Reader App

Microsoft has been operating a digital bookstore since late 2017 and they sell ebooks only in the United States and have refused to sell them in other countries. Their store is so feeble that it accounts for less than 1% of all ebook sales. This is primarily attributed to the Edge browser as being the only way you can read books. Edge only has a paltry 4% adoption rate and many people ignore its pleas to be their default browser.

It is important to note that Microsoft Edge recently launched on Android phones and iPhones, but its e-reading experience is abysmal. The desktop Edge browser is the only fully featured platform that has EPUB/PDF support and the ability to read ebooks or have them read aloud via Cortana.

From 2000 to 2012, Microsoft Reader was the name of an e-book reader that was able to read their proprietary format LIT ebook format. In 2013, Microsoft released a Microsoft Reader application for reading documents in PDF, XPS and TIFF formats. Reader was included in Windows 8.1 and was a free download from the Windows Store for Windows 10. Microsoft discontinued the application in February 2018, as PDF reading functionality was moved to the Microsoft Edge browser.

From 2000 to 2012 there was no industry standard for ebook formats, it was the wild west. All sorts of formats were vying to be the industry standard for digital publishing. There was FB2, DIVU, LIT, LRF, FB21, MOBI, PRC, EPUB. Amazon purchased the Mobipocket company in 2005 and got the MOBI format, which was the basis for the Kindle book format. Market Forces determined EPUB to have the brightest future for North America and Western Europe, since it was flexible and is a technical standard published by the International Digital Publishing Forum. It is the basis for the e-reading experience on Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google and dozens of worldwide players.

The Microsoft Bookstore sells content in EPUB, but since the Edge browser has puny adoption rates, the company NEEDS to release a new mobile ebook app. Most people read on their smartphones and love to purchase ebooks. Microsoft does not have a mobile version of their store available for Android or iPhones, you can’t buy books.

I suggest that Microsoft release a dedicated ebook app where people can buy and read books in a singular app and is optimized for large and small phones. This will promote digital book sales, which obviously Microsoft wants, even if it accounts for a fraction of a percent in terms of their overall sales. Obviously their ebook unit will never compare to the sheer amount of money their operating system yields, Microsoft Office and 365 subscription sales, the cloud unit geared towards businesses or even their intellectual property and licensing division.

Microsoft has a small staff that run the Windows Bookstore and there are people held accountable for driving sales and working with publishers, in addition to curation. No web based bookstore will stay operational for long or gain any meaningful traction in the US, unless they embrace other platforms. Android and iOS should have an official Microsoft e-Reading app. Being able to buy and read books is critically important and it might promote more Cortana usage if they enhanced it for better text to speech capabilities. People will never embrace Edge as a browser on Android or their iPhone, but they will install an ebook app.

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

Fully agree on this topic. It’s ridiculous how they are trying to enter a market with only a software that nobody wants. If they already have a plan I don’t see what it might be.
Why I left the Windows platform btw.

Heidi Steindel

They need an ereader. Reading on tablet or pc sucks

kfg

We don’t need another sandbox and Microsoft doesn’t need to be in the bookselling business.

the thing is with Edge for Windows 10 you can read books you purchase. But you can’t buy ebooks in Edge, you have to use the Microsoft Windows Store. The store is unavailable on Edge for Android and iOS. Talk about fragmentation.

I doubt Microsoft will be in the bookselling business for long if they can’t solve the mobile problem, but I guess they never will. Their entire foray into mobile as been an unmitigated disaster. The only thing they got right was the Surface. Their litany of mobile OS failures has tarnished them forever.

Microsoft isn’t in the bookselling business, they’re in the sandbox business. Of course, to make a sandbox you need to fill it with sand. That’s where the books come in.

So, they aren’t trying to solve the bookselling problem, not even the mobile problem per se. They’re trying to solve the Taking Over the World problem. How to put everything in their own sandbox.

So, from their point of view, an app is problematic. They can build a sandbox for books that way, but they have to put it in somebody else’s sandbox. One of those “someones” is a competitor and the other is the mortal enemy that actually threatens to take them out someday.

In any case, the issue from our point of view isn’t solved by Microsoft releasing an app. That’s just slapping another Band-Aid(tm) on the problem and pretending that it’s gone away.

Our problem, as readers, book buyers, as well as buyers and purveyors of e-readers is: there are already too many sandboxes.

We should only need one app/e-reader. The obstacles to that are strictly commercial and pigheaded, not technological. It could roll out tomorrow. We don’t need Microsoft to release an app, we need them to support standards.

But that would put them in the bookselling business and they aren’t in the bookselling business. They’re in the sandbox business. Which is where I came in to this movie.

Heidi Steindel

Does not seem much different than a tablet or a folding tablet.

jmurphy

Came for the factual errors, was not disappointed.

“Microsoft developed an e-reading app in 2000 that was designed for PDF and XPS formats and soon gained the ability to run LIT files”
Completely WRONG. These are two different programs. The original MS Reader app from 2000 could only read .LIT, nothing else. After it was canceled in 2012, Microsoft later reused the name for a Windows 8
app that could read PDF and XPS. The two programs are unrelated, and have nothing in common. At no time did Microsoft have a single program that could read .LIT and PDF/XPS.

I hardly ever use it as most of my books are Nook and Kobo, but on a Windows tablet or PC, the reading experience on Edge is great, arguably fourth behind the “big three”. I also use a Windows Phone and the reading experience works well through that. The quality of the text on Edge is excellent.

GMUPatriots

A revised Courier is coming as the Andromeda device. However that device isn’t going to be focused on reading, nor is it going to have the e-ink screen I so dearly wanted it to have. The device will be focused on digital inking.

GMUPatriots

I have a couple problems with this article.

First, market forces have not “determined EPUB to have the brightest future for North America and Western Europe.” Amazon accounts for approximately 75% of ebook sales in the US and according to an article you published in March 2017, an estimated 95% of ebook sales in the UK. Based on what I can find online, Amazon’s #1 in sales in Canada and have 50-60% of the ebook sales in Germany and France. As you correctly point out, Amazon continues to use their own version of Mobi. Consumers clearly haven’t forgotten the Kindle and Kindle apps even though Bezos appears to have decided to let his ebook and Kindle device business run on autopilot. Market forces have determined that the ebook format with the “brightest future” is whatever format Amazon chooses to use. This leads to my second point.

Microsoft doesn’t need to develop an app to run on Android or iOS. They’re simply not going to beat Amazon at this point in the “game.” I read an article a couple days ago where someone who is (or was) running Windows Mobile talked about how they made some mistakes with that OS and by the time they fixed them it was too late to compete with iOS and Android. This is the point we’re at in the ebook market. Even if Amazon somehow screws up their dominance, Google and even Kobo have a *huge* “head start” on Microsoft. I would argue that Microsoft needs to abandon ebooks and put whatever money they’re spending into other projects where they’re still competitive.

If Microsoft’s serious about ebooks they need to produce a competitively priced device that does something the Kindle doesn’t. The rumored Andromeda device would have been a great way to do that. One e-ink screen with stylus capability and an OLED screen on the other side. If the rumored specs are true, it appears they’re not interested in doing that.